Buddy Platform inline for sweet market validation as Nestlé opts for Buddy Ohm

Adelaide-based Buddy Platform (ASX: BUD), a data aggregation and management infrastructure provider, has unveiled Swiss food giant Nestlé as its most recent customer.

Presenting at the Mobile World Congress (WMC) in Barcelona, Spain, Buddy and its partner Digicel jointly-announced that Nestle would be utilising Buddy Ohm, a complete monitoring solution for commercial and industrial buildings.

According to Buddy Platform, its Ohm system is “made up of Internet of Things (IoT) class hardware, the Buddy Cloud, plus engaging software experiences,” such as a dedicated operations portal and ultra-detailed dashboards for monitoring and reducing consumption of natural resources like electricity, water, gas, steam, temperature and humidity.

Buddy says that Buddy Ohm is “a complete and low-cost solution for facility resource monitoring and verification, connects systems that were never designed to work together while turning energy savings into a strategic asset.”

As its newest customer, Nestlé validates Buddy’s Ohm product and sets the stage for additional large-scale customers to be signed up over the coming months.

Upon announcement of the news this morning, Buddy Platform shares have risen by 15% at the time of writing.

Sweet market Nestlé

Nestlé is the largest food company in the world, with US$98.8 billion in revenues and ranking 64^th on the Fortune Global 500 last year. Nestlé has 447 factories, operates in 194 countries and employs approximately 339,000 staff.

Nestlé will deploy the Buddy Ohm and Buddy Cloud products to improve energy efficiency and to improve ongoing maintenance of its facilities.

In total, Buddy Platform offers three unique offerings – Buddy Cloud, Buddy Ohm and Parse on Buddy. Buddy Cloud offers smart city providers a globally scalable data ingestment and management platform while Parse on Buddy is a mobile backend as a service (mBaaS) built on the world’s most popular BaaS technology.

In a Smart Cities presentation at MWC, the world’s largest trade show for mobile operators, Buddy Platform CEO, David McLauchlan and Digicel Head of IoT Business Development Bryan Kaneco, hosted a presentation aimed at broadening the awareness of Buddy Ohm, saying that Buddy Ohm “is a vehicle for mobile operator network monetisation in smart cities.”

Buddy Platform says that its Ohm product has “particular application in markets like the Caribbean where energy costs are very high and considers Nestlé as “a perfect customer case study for both Buddy and Digicel,” citing Nestle’s successful roll-out of its products in recent months as validation for its overarching strategy.

Nestlé roll-out

Nestlé Jamaica deployed the Buddy Ohm (branded ‘Ohm by Digicel’ in the Caribbean) system in their primary Kingston facility. Following a successful first deployment, Nestlé has now expanded upon its initial installation and is expected to expand Ohm’s coverage across more of its operational sites in the region.

By identifying energy consumption inefficiencies, Nestlé has reduced its energy costs by deploying Buddy Ohm and plans “to introduce the Ohm View Dashboard for team-wide visibility,” according to shareholder market update.

The company also says that Nestle’s roll-out of Buddy Ohm has demonstrated the considerable potential for deployment site growth within a given customer, both regionally and internationally.

Large multinationals such as Nestlé facing a growing problem of efficiently managing its company-wide energy usage. On one hand, its energy usage can be very high given the scale of its operations, but by the same token, Nestlé can potentially implement significant energy savings over time.

Considering its emissions footprint as part of energy savings have become so important that Nestlé created a dedicated “Nestlé Behaviours” program aiming to mitigate Nestlé’s energy usage across its near 500 factories.

“We’re thrilled to be helping Nestlé meet their corporate energy savings goals, and welcome the opportunity to service additional sites in their property portfolio”, said David McLauchlan, CEO of Buddy Platform.

“Nestlé chose the Ohm by Digicel solution because it was easy to install, had an easy to understand interface and it provided them with quality and timely information. It provides the ability to zero in on where the highest consumption is and take steps to intervene effectively and efficiently”.

Digicel’s Bryan Kane said, “Customers like Nestlé are the foundation of our enterprise business, and we need to keep innovating to ensure we’re delivering the very best products and services. We look forward to growing our IoT business relationship with them with additional deployments of the Ohm by Digicel solution”.